Lurking with intent

On Monday afternoon (a bank holiday here in the UK) I ventured out while the sun was shining for a nice walk. That was when I spotted yesterday’s damsel. Whilst dragons and damsels look beautiful and elegant when they’re all grown up, they start life in the pond as larvae and I’ve discovered this year that if I look carefully I can find Dragonfly larvae lurking and hunting! What a discovery! 🙂

So every time I’m at the pond now I look closely for what appears to be small areas of sediment that suddenly sprout legs and scuttle across the bottom of the pond, with their eyes on the many tadpoles. Up to now, in any photos I’ve taken, it’s been near impossible to distinguish the larva from the sediment. But on Monday I was nosing round the edges of the pond and spotted a soggy area where there was a lot of grass and weed in the pond margin, and tadpoles were gathered. I thought to myself ‘I wonder if there are dragons lurking’ and sure enough, there were! Hurrah!